With the mushrooming of Pentecostal churches and so-called apostles, prophets, bishops, pastors and evangelists, there is need for church leaders to protect their members from mongering around searching for ‘miracles’. The Family Calvary Church recently organised a week-long Kingdom Leadership Summit, at Robin’s Park in Blantyre, aiming at safeguarding its members and training its pastors across the country. JAMES CHIMPWEYA caught up with Apostle MADALITSO MBEWE, founding president of the church, on the importance of the seminar.
What was the objective of the seminar?
It was to train pastors and their spouses to keep the church strong spiritually and help the growth of the church wherever they minister as resident pastors. This comes as the background of Colossians 4:17 ‘Be sure to finish the task you were given in the Lord’s service’. Secondly, pastors are told to take heed of the ministry they were called for to also train their church leaders (elders). They should know that the ministry was given to them by God to lead His people to eternity.
Why is it important to protect the church?
With the mushrooming of Pentecostal churches and the fast coming of prophets, people are just being carried away by the wind. Among other things, we are training them to know the difference between salvation and miracles. People rush for miracles but leaving salvation behind and that most preachers preach about prosperity without having much emphasis on salvation and this is dangerous to spiritual life. The country is facing more pressure on excellence, economy, food shortage and sometimes pastors tend to forget the demand of the ministry to proclaim the gospel without profits. The ministry needs to be protected and be kept going without any condition despite some challenges the leaders face.
What are the church’s expectations from the seminar
Pastors have to look after their families and churches they are ministering. There are strange teachings engulfing churches today and as pastors, they have to protect their church members from such teachings. During these days, we had a Zimbabwean couple of Pastor Goodwill Shana and Maureen Shana who taught men and women in their personal roles in the church. These teachings are helpful to the church in Malawi. We need to transform the church. We are expecting a lot of change in the church’s administration when they go back to their various stations.
How many delegates attended the seminar?
We had between 70 and 100 families and once these have graduated they will go out and there is time to give reports of how their churches are performing after the seminar. This was a refresher course for them, which came six months after they were trained. This programme started in 2013. Pastors have to implement what they have been taught in the church growth and how to keep and retain its members.
Any last word?
The pastors have to understand the roles of men and women in the church because they were given chance to ask questions. That was the interesting part of the seminar because couples asked pertinent questions which were answered for the good relationship of church members and pastors, and their wives as leaders. n
